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The 104 degree data center

More importantly, at super-dense, hyperscale data centers, by taking out the power supplies and doing very efficient and direct conversion of AC power to DC needed by the motherboard and disks, Rackable says that customers can run these units at 40 degrees Celsius (or 104 degrees Fahrenheit). Most server gear is rated at a peak of 35 degrees C, and that is mostly because of the sensitivity of disk drives (and their whirring parts) to heat.

Atashie ventures that companies putting in solid state drives instead of disk drives could run the boxes even hotter, but says the company hasn't tested this yet in its labs. The important thing is that by letting the CloudRacks run hotter, that means the data center air conditioning doesn't have to be cranked up to the level where you need a jacket.

With four 2.5-inch drives per system, a CloudRack2 setup can cram as many as 1,280 cores in a 46U rack, which works out to 32 cores per 1U of space (that's 80 server mobos in total). With the MicroSlice Mini-ITX boards, the CloudRack 2 racks can cram up to 240 servers into that 46U rack, for a total of 480 cores. (That's only 12 cores per 1U of rack space, but this setup is designed to maximize the count of servers, not the cores). This kind of density is as good or better than anything IBM, HP, and Dell can put into the field with their best blades.

Well, at least until they launch new products over the coming weeks.

Rackable builds its systems to order on a customer-by-customer basis, and it does not provide list prices. The former is fine, but the latter is a bad business practice as far as I can tell. ®